Happy Thanksgiving - TBT Recipes

Happy Thanksgiving Astoria!

Hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday and has some festive plans in the works.  For those of you who are keeping it low-key and spending time at home, I wanted to inspire you with a few tasty recipes to grace your Thanksgiving table with.  These all come from my previous posts, so I call this my Thanksgiving #TBT tribute.  Enjoy!

Dan's Thanksgiving Kitchen Sink Pizza - While this may be a good one to experiment with after Thanksgiving, it can also be a fun, non-traditional spin on your holiday feast.

Wild Rice Stuffing - If you're looking for an alternative to bread stuffing, this one is delicious and it's veggie friendly too.  However, you can also spruce it up with meat such as ground chicken sausage.  

White Chocolate Pumpkin Truffles - One year, I tried making my own chocolate truffles and thought they came out well.  Sure they're a little rustic looking but our guests appreciated the homemade touch.  You can also do them with dark or milk chocolate - depends on your preference.

Classic Lattice Apple Pie - Although this pie definitely takes some love and care to put together, your guests will thank you and will be super impressed.  Once you get the lattice method down, it's a lot of fun and makes for beautiful photographs (and yummies in your tummy).

Caramelized Apple Pecan Pie - One more pie recipe for good luck never hurt anyone.  If you can't decide between an apple or a pecan pie, create a hybrid with this sophisticated dessert creation that's a cinch to put together (especially if you use a pre-made pie crust).

Wild Rice Stuffing for Thanksgiving

Today was our annual pre-Thanksgiving potluck at work and everyone was tasked with making something comforting and yummy.  Being a part of the process of setting up, I got to see all the dishes ahead of time, and therefore got to salivate early.  Everything was really delicious - from the 10 different types of mashed potatoes and mac 'n cheese to 5 types of pumpkin pies and even these neat little chocolate/Nutella cheesecake bites.

As far as my contribution goes, I wanted to bring out stuffing in a non-traditional sense with the above wild rice stuffing dish, which is of course veggie friendly.  Cooked in a pungent veggie stock, further dressed with fragrant onions and garlic, the dish proved itself in terms of flavor.  And even though I thought it needed a bit more salt, that's very much a personal preference, and my colleagues seemed to enjoy it.

While the rice was cooked already and then further embellished with cranberries with orange essence, toasted sunflower seeds (in place of the walnuts that the recipe called for) and fresh parsley, it was then put into a 375 degree oven, creating a slightly crunchy well done crust.  Needless to say, it makes a perfect companion for your Thanksgiving bird.  Enjoy!

Wild Rice Stuffing - Recipe courtesy of Whole Foods